Desh

by Kim Kellas

  The bedroom door opened. “Aila? Your father needs you to go to the cash ’n’ carry.”

  “Okay. Ma. Tell him to do a list.” She swung both feet out of bed and kicked at the heap of clothes on the floor. Musty trousers and any old top would do.

  Downstairs Sadhan lay sprawled on the sofa with his unruly black hair nestled in one corner while the television blared in front of him. She stood behind the sofa and barked “Right. So, Dad, the list,” to startle him and when he turned to face her she jiggled the trackie bottoms in a way calculated to enrage him – like the white girls on the estate, the other pig’s children.

  He scowled and gave her the list. “Bring everything to the restaurant by one o’clock. I have some cheques you need to sign and cover your head before you go out.”

  She zipped the logoed hoodie with as much noise as possible and stomped into the hall, where scarves were slung over the stair rail. “For sure,” she said,” Because hijabs are good at hiding bruises aren’t they?” and slammed the porch door behind her.

  Safe inside the Peugeot, she sat motionless until the thumping in her chest subsided. How does he know but not know? Like he can smell something, but doesn’t know what it is. He can’t possibly have known or he’d have killed her. Would he?

  She thought back to a time at school. It was her GSCE year and rumours about her had been spread. As the only hijabi in high heels she expected crap, but this had reached her father via the estate and he summoned her to ask if what he’d heard was true. Had she been sleeping around?

  Aila saw such black hate in his eyes she knew in that instant he would have killed her if he could have proved it. She met his eyes and told the truth. He believed her and the threat passed. “But if you ever sleep with anyone I will know, by the look on your face,” he said. Well, she hadn’t fallen yet, technically. The red and gold Sura charm dangled behind the mirror so that its Arab script faced her. Its incantation to ward off harm had worked so far.

  Aila didn’t get to the restaurant until three that afternoon, when the lunchtime shift was nearly done. Dog-tired waiters stood sentinel along the wall and heads nodded as the owner’s daughter walked down the centre aisle to her usual table, the one behind the fish tank and closest to the kitchen. She passed the bags over to eager hands and waited.

  Through the doorway she watched her father standing at the tandoor oven. His skin had been roasted over the years and the pores enlarged like craters. Even after he left the kitchen, the heat continued to emanate. He sat opposite and opened a cheque book. “You took your time. Here, sign these and deposit them at the bank by Monday morning.”

  She thumbed through the cheque book. “If you’d listen when I tell you things are due, it’d make life so much easier. Or get yourself a proper accountant.”

  “Lower your voice,” he said. Their eyes met. Lift your game, she thought. It was her name on the company paperwork, something Sadhan had decided when she’d turned eighteen. At the time she’d felt honoured; not now, though.

  He pushed more pages across the table. “I need you to sign these, too,” and he tracked her face as she read.

  “This is a loan application. For what?”

  “Renovation for the restaurant.”

  “Well, it certainly needs doing, but what do you have in mind and who’s going to do the work this time? If it’s one of your contacts, Dad, I’m not signing this.”

  “You have to. The council came for an inspection. Shamim was here,” he added nodding towards the head waiter. “He knows all about it.”

  Aila glared back. “So when the council was here did they happen to mention the tribe of illegals you’ve got working here? No, I didn’t think so. What’s the money really for?”

  “I told you. Just sign the paperwork.”

  “I won’t put a loan for fifteen grand in my name.”

  “You’re my daughter.”

  “Tell me you’re not borrowing to cover the rent.”

  “Just sign it and take it to the manager at NatWest on Monday, when you deposit those cheques. Do it,” he hissed.

  “Fine Dad. Whatever.” She had to back down. A daughter couldn’t be seen to argue in front of the staff. She kissed the top of his head and felt Shamim watch her every step as she walked out.

  The sun hit her eyes and the pavement was thronged with sandals, buggies and black Labradors. Away from the restaurant, the rest of the world appeared to be enjoying the holidays. She joined the tide of people walking over the bridge.

  Children hung over the side, dangling their fishing lines, and an image came to mind of she and Maz doing the same thing, from the same bridge. He was just a little guy, maybe eight or nine, and they’d fossick about all afternoon until Sadhan gathered them up to go home. Holidays then meant fishing lines and catering buckets, or trips home to Bangladesh, when they were older.

  On the high street she stopped to look at shorts and crop tops arranged in a shop window, tastefully decorated using a ‘less is more’ approach. She could not help noting the contrast with the crowded menu offered by the restaurant, which shouted for the food to be bought. There’d always been a wall of glass between Aila and the life everyone else seemed to lead.

  Further along she stopped at the perfume shop to enjoy smell of expensive for a while, until she saw the blue boxes of Angel displayed at full price on the back wall and suddenly window shopping lost its appeal. Perhaps a drive would do the trick. She felt comfortable when she was out driving and she could always visit her cousin in Stepney: it had been months since she last saw Maryam and the baby; or she could head into Kingston and see if any of the old crew still hung out at Nando’s.

  It wasn’t a difficult choice. Arriving at Nando’s, she saw the same faces at the table by the window. The manager waved from behind the counter when she walked in and Jay smiled as she sat beside him. “Hey, Begum, long time no see, what’s new?” The big news was Shafia and she talked about the wedding.

  “Another one bites the dust. Not many of us left now, eh? Good times though, good times,” he said.

  “The best. Won’t be the same without her.” She nudged him.” Now who’m I going to chill in Richmond Park with?”

  He laughed. “Chill? You mean get plastered. That was one hell of an afternoon. You girls were on one.”

  “You weren’t so upright, Boy. Dancing round the car, shouting ‘old skool tune keep it coming’ at the radio.”

  “And you weren’t whining and twerking in broad daylight then? Like your ass was possessed. I still have a picture, Begum, up here,” he tapped his head. “You know, one day I’m gonna take you to a Nigerian wedding for some real dancing.” He touched the tip of her nose.

  “Yeah, one day,” she said. They’d had this conversation before and still she saw their faces locked together and felt the sweat of their bodies, but then remembered the day in her final year that it had to end. She’d never have got a pass out for a Nigerian wedding, especially not her own. Good times, though, good times.

  Around five Aila came home to find her brother lugging plastic bags, her mother crying in the lounge room and huge jars of coins of the table. “All right, I give in. What’s going on?”

  Mazid dumped the bags, one by one, on the table. “The landlord’s been. He wants the restaurant rent by Monday.”

  “We talking one month or two?” said Aila.

  “Three.”

  “I knew it. So now we’re counting coins? Ma, this isn’t going to help. We need thousands, not tens.”

  Nessa wiped her eyes. “It all adds up. Your father still has the first five pound note he earned in this country.”

  “So you keep telling me. Maz, have you called him?” He nodded and went back upstairs, while Nessa retrieved a clutch of battered envelopes from inside the kitchen. Aila sat at the table and stared at envelopes stuffed with notes. “Where did all this come from?�
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  Her mother remained standing. “I’ve been saving since the day I was married. All the change from the housekeeping? I kept it, and every bit of money I found lying around, in pockets or on the floor. I kept those as well. A man can only save what his wife doesn’t spend,” she added, as though answering a judgement of some kind.

  “This is completely and utterly Dad’s fault. He knows the landlord wants cash. He should get his act together and not put you through hell every time the rent’s due.”

  “Show some respect. Just remember he’s come from nothing and built up a business on his own.”

  “Not quite, he has my salary now.” She raised an eyebrow, in defiance.

  Her mother glared. “That is his property.” Aila slumped against the table, holding out one arm. She poked the belly of a bag and watched the coins resettle. Here was a wife who measured her devotion coin by coin, year by year, while her husband just accepted this as the God given right of a Bengali man. If she had her way, the rules would be rewritten.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by deep grunts and groans from behind. Mazid had found a catering bucket so full of coins it took all his strength to pull it out from under the sink in the kitchen and drag it across the carpet. “Holy moley, little Bro.” She helped pull it over and the three of them faced the huge pile sprawled over the mahogany table, while her mother rubbed Mazid’s back. “Well, that’s that then. Let’s get stuck in,” she said.

  Aila counted and her brother made towers of coins. They worked their way from one corner of the table towards the middle and neither really spoke. She kept counting, almost soothed by the monotony of the task, and Mazid sorted ten, twenty and fifty pound piles and labelled each with post it notes, in his methodical way and apart from the light of the television behind them, the room had grown dark.

  They’d managed to count £580 by the time X Factor started. Aila stopped to listen for a moment, and, recognising the Michael Jackson tune, began to hum along to an old favourite. Her brother turned to watch and joined her.

  “They don’t see you as I do.

  I wish they would try to.

  I’m sure they’d think again if they had a friend like Ben.”

  “Liiiiike Ben.”

  The studio audience applauded. Mazid drummed the table, “Rats, rats, rats. This is getting us nowhere.” His concentration had broken.

  Aila rubbed her face. “You know Shaf’s Dad’s just sold three of his restaurants for more than a million.”

  “That doesn’t help. I need a break,” said Mazid.

  So they decided to go out for a while. If they went for a drive, Aila thought they might as well get some of the coins changed at the Sainsbury’s nearby. That way they could say they got more money than they would, for Nessa’s sake.

  As it happened, Sainsbury’s wasn’t that simple. Aila had to drive to three different stores as the coin counting machines clogged up, and people behind them became aggressive. Even late at night the supermarkets were depressingly full.

  But Nessa was mollified and when Sadhan came home he’d brought the takings back for his daughter to count, and yes they’d had a bumper night by Shapla standards, which when added to the cheques he’d given her provided just enough to pay two month’s rent on the following Monday, which might be enough to see them through to the next time.

  He’d stuffed everything to do with the business into a bag, when he got the call from home. So after he’d eaten, Nessa was finally persuaded to go to bed, Mazid felt he could then escape and Aila was left to face her father again.

  He emptied the bag out onto the table. She sorted through the jumble of papers, clipped credit card receipts in one pile, till receipts in another and tapped on a school calculator as she went. He lent back in the chair and watched. Every so often she’d stop and ask the questions he didn’t want asked and his shoulders would slump, then she went for the big one.

  “What’s the loan really for? If it’s to cover rent, why fifteen grand?”

  He dropped his head into his hands and groaned.

  “All right. Enough. I give up. Go to bed, Dad.”

  “Salaam Aikum, my golden girl.” He stroked her hair, and kissed her forehead.

  “God be with you, too,” she said as he left and Aila stayed at the table working until the Sainsbury’s bag became three neat piles of paperwork and the first streaks of orange broke through the morning sky.

  Deals, debts and demons

  Aila waited outside the bank while navy-suited girls sat like soldiers inside their glass booths and thought, if the loan goes through, it will take a huge chunk out of my money for years – ten long years. The clock on the wall clunked forward to 9 a.m.

  She deposited the money and the loan application and hoped navy-suitedness would prevail and the loan would be refused. If the banks did their job properly, it would be and she drove to work thinking it really shouldn’t be possible for a twenty-two-year-old, eight months into her first job, to be given a loan for fifteen grand.

  Ah well, it was done now and, as she walked down the corridor towards the office, her mood started to lift. At least work made sense and she didn’t have to be Affa, Mia or a punch bag. The whiteboard on the wall shouted sales figures in red marker pen. Microsoft pinged into life and the manager poked his head round the door.

  “Big weekend then?”

  “One long party.” She took her sunglasses off.

  “Blimey. Anything I can do?”

  “Nah, just let me work. It’s the best cure.”

  “You and me both, hun.” Neil touched her shoulder and added fresh numbers to the whiteboard.

  Later in the day, an outraged female member had been propositioned in the mixed steam rooms and Neil wanted her to deal with it.” You’re good at this stuff,” he said. So she marched down to the pool, yanked open the steam room doors and, in her best Assistant Manager’s voice, reminded the steroid-addled goons sat in a sweaty circle that not every woman expected to be hit on in the steam room, and even fewer women would find their pumped-up pecs that appealing. “So, behave or be banned.”

  Afterwards, she high-fived Neil and he left her to check the CCTV footage from the night before and plough on with the month-end reports for August. When the spread sheet finally took shape, it had grown dark outside.

  The call from her father came as she left the building. Was she coming home? Why was it necessary to work so late? A good daughter helped round the house and kept her head covered. Aila tried not to bite back until he finally hung up and, as her feet ground the gravel of the car park, she thought, funny how sound travelled at night.

  The lights were few, just one or two at sparse intervals. She felt inside her bag for the clutch of keys. A car door clicked and the light inside flicked on. “So babe, you done for the night?” She looked into the front window of the car.

  “What you boys doing hanging in a car park? Haven’t you got someplace better to be?” The interior light reflected on a black bonnet that gleamed with polished pride. The driver stepped out of the car. “Waiting for you and your friend. Thought we might go to Revolution’s, later.” He ran a hand down her arm.

  “You need to learn when to play and when to stop, especially when there’s CCTV around.”

  “Like I believe that.”

  “No? Well, Du-wayne, the tape me and the manager watched looked a whole lot like you and my friend in the back of this car last week. So thanks for the invite, but my friend isn’t around and I got to be getting home now, all right?”

  “It’s Dwayne, yeah? – not Du-wayne and I’m gonna spread the word about you. That stopped you.”

  “You know nothing about me.”

  “I know where you work.”

  “So?”

  “I’ll tell them all what you’re like.”

  “Go on then. That’s really going to work a t
reat with the footage we’ve got of you. You can kiss your gym membership goodbye and fun times in the steam room. Oh and you’ll have to pay your arrears too before you’ll be allowed back in. Shall we talk about that now?”

  “Evil bitch.”

  “Back off. The camera’s rolling.” She disengaged and continued walking, with measured footsteps.

  “You don’t call the shots,” he said.

  The car came to a weary stop outside the house. She cut the music and watched the Sura charm dangle. The car park at work would have to cease to be a playground and, though her father seemed to have given up cleaning inside the Peugeot, she sprayed round with deodorant, just in case.

  She hurried past the grass border of the estate and, once inside, she slumped on the sofa. “You look worn out,” Nessa said.

  “Don’t, Ma, please.”

  Her mother continued to stroke her hair. “I had a dream last night. I saw you in the car at night. It was pitch black outside and you were there on your own. You’d parked in a multi-story place, late – after midnight. You got into the car quickly because you were scared – it was a bad part of London, and you wanted to get home. You had parked on the top floor so you knew you had to wind your way down to get out, but every floor looked the same and there were no exit signs. It was one of those horrible places with concrete everywhere and you kept getting lost and couldn’t find your way out. You drove round and round, but it just got worse and worse. The more you drove the more lost you became and you couldn’t find your way out.”

  She wrapped a scarf round Aila’s shoulders. “Here, you’re shivering and you seem to have lost an earring.”

  Later, upstairs in her room Aila tried to call Shaf, but she didn’t pick up. She left a few missed calls and waited until her eyes started to close of their own accord and she had to go to sleep.

  When she hadn’t heard for a few days, she let it go. She knew her friend would call eventually, though perhaps there was some truth in what her mother used to say. Nessa always warned her not to put too much effort into friends. People outside the family will lead you into trouble, she’d say and girls will get married and leave you.